Hello I am a first year computer science major, and I am wanting to use linux. The first question is, how do i know whis os is appropriate for me? It seems everyone I know uses Unbuntu, but it also seems redhat is very popular. The main question is, how do i install it onto my external hard drive. The install instructions that seem most appropriate are found here http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download but it says for cd and usb stick, not external hard drive. Any help / insight is very appreciated.

I'm personally fond of openbox because of its simplistic, straight-edged design, and hate KDE and its silly bubbly interfaces. I see a lot of love for some of the tiling interfaces, but I could never really get into those when I could operate openbox much faster than dwm or awesome. Besides, I never really understood how to navigate them.

Openbox, Awesome, XFCE, Gnome-Shell(only if heavily customized, and with cinnamon)

Hello I am a first year computer science major, and I am wanting to use linux. The first question is, how do i know whis os is appropriate for me? It seems everyone I know uses Unbuntu, but it also seems redhat is very popular. The main question is, how do i install it onto my external hard drive. The install instructions that seem most appropriate are found here http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download but it says for cd and usb stick, not external hard drive. Any help / insight is very appreciated.

Try several in a virtual PC. You should have the capabilities to figure out how shit works.
Try mint, fedora, Ubuntu, Suse. Then try the more difficult ones like Gentoo or Arch.

I'm personally fond of openbox because of its simplistic, straight-edged design, and hate KDE and its silly bubbly interfaces. I see a lot of love for some of the tiling interfaces, but I could never really get into those when I could operate openbox much faster than dwm or awesome. Besides, I never really understood how to navigate them.

I like KDE. I don't think it's bubbly. :/

I've tried using Openbox, and I could do it, but it was too time consuming to set up and I didn't like the mishmash of programs I had to install to get things like a volume mixer on my taskbar which I also had to install seperately.

I like having an interface that doesn't take ages to setup. I don't like to think of myself as a GUI "power user". If I want to do "power user" type stuff I do it in the terminal. I just want an interface that works with no effort.

I've tried using Openbox, and I could do it, but it was too time consuming to set up and I didn't like the mishmash of programs I had to install to get things like a volume mixer on my taskbar which I also had to install seperately.

I like having an interface that doesn't take ages to setup. I don't like to think of myself as a GUI "power user". If I want to do "power user" type stuff I do it in the terminal. I just want an interface that works with no effort.

just write a python/shellscript, so you only have to set it up once, and then everytime you need an openbox set up, you can execute the script, and it will set up everything for you. Thats what I do.

Try several in a virtual PC. You should have the capabilities to figure out how shit works.
Try mint, fedora, Ubuntu, Suse. Then try the more difficult ones like Gentoo or Arch.

Then pick your flavor.

Agreed. I'd personally recommend either Ubuntu or Mint, they're the best beginner distributions at the minute. If you're thinking of using Ubuntu, wait 35 days or so and the new version will be out (saves you the hassle of upgrading). Mint should be fine to just get going!

I wouldn't recommend Fedora, it's suited more to a geekier audience and isn't tested that well (Fedora 15's liveCD had a broken installer for crying out loud).

Don't bother with Gentoo, it's interesting but seems rather pointless. (So much compiling). Arch on the other hand is awesome and once you've played with Ubuntu, I recommend giving it a go. Even if just in a Virtual Machine. The wiki is fantastic, check the beginners guide. Installing Arch is rather easy, but on the way through it you'll learn the basic ins and outs of GNU/Linux (Commands, CLI interface etc.) and how everything works together to make the complete system.

So I can download it onto my computer, then put the actual OS on my external drive? So when I want to use the os I would boot from the external drive, correct?

There is a very common problem people run into when installing ubuntu on an external hard drive.
I don't know how familiar you are with the boot process, so I'll make this simple.

When you install any os. It needs to put some code on the MBR which is the first thing read and run from the hard drive at boot time. Ubuntu uses GRUB.

What happens when you install ubuntu is that it will put it's own bootloader (GRUB) on the MBR. This means that it will overwrite whatever was on there previously. This is fine for an external HDD because their MBRs are often empty because they're not being booted. It becomes a bit of a larger issue if you put the MBR on your main disk (where you have windows installed). GRUB, in that case would overwrite the windows bootloader. Windows should be able to boot because GRUB is able to make windows boot.

The problem with installing on an external HDD is that ubuntu has a tendency to want to put GRUB on the MBR of the first disk. (Your main HDD, most probably) Like I said above windows should still be able to boot because GRUB knows how to make it boot. The problem arises when you remove the external hard drive. GRUB keeps a bunch of files that it needs to operate in the /boot/grub directory. When you remove the external hard drive GRUB will not be able to do anything because it is lacking those files.

This can be prevented. Ubuntu, like all other distros will allow you to choose where you want to put GRUB. In your case you're going to want to make sure that you put it on the MBR of the external hard drive. You should be given the option before the installation when the installer asks you a bunch of questions. Make sure you don't miss it and make sure that GRUB will be installed on your external hdd before you proceed with the installation.

Agreed. I'd personally recommend either Ubuntu or Mint, they're the best beginner distributions at the minute. If you're thinking of using Ubuntu, wait 35 days or so and the new version will be out (saves you the hassle of upgrading). Mint should be fine to just get going!

I wouldn't recommend Fedora, it's suited more to a geekier audience and isn't tested that well (Fedora 15's liveCD had a broken installer for crying out loud).

Don't bother with Gentoo, it's interesting but seems rather pointless. (So much compiling). Arch on the other hand is awesome and once you've played with Ubuntu, I recommend giving it a go. Even if just in a Virtual Machine. The wiki is fantastic, check the beginners guide. Installing Arch is rather easy, but on the way through it you'll learn the basic ins and outs of GNU/Linux (Commands, CLI interface etc.) and how everything works together to make the complete system.

Hope that helps. If you need any more advice feel free to ask.

I wouldn't go with Ubuntu as the beginner distro anymore, especially not with the dumb 'HUD' feature coming up in 12.04.

Disregarding beginner distributions, Gentoo has very good points. Even if it does take a little time to compile some of the packages (gcc and chromium takes my top 2), it also allows you to NOT compile in extra 'features'. As such, I can create my own system without any support for mp3 and other proprietary formats that I never ever use anyway, or compile support for IRC chat into IM programs, and a whole lot of other things too!
If you want the best of both worlds (Arch with binary builds, and the entirety of Gentoo's system, including the portage system), you can have it too! Sabayon is the system I use everywhere, pretty much.

I'm personally fond of openbox because of its simplistic, straight-edged design, and hate KDE and its silly bubbly interfaces. I see a lot of love for some of the tiling interfaces, but I could never really get into those when I could operate openbox much faster than dwm or awesome. Besides, I never really understood how to navigate them.

As I've said many times in this thread and a few others, I've always found myself coming back to E17 after trying other DEs/WMs. It just works so nicely for me. The only issue I have is that the composite module does not work nicely on my laptop with the xf86 drivers so I have to use xcompmgr (and then I lose the ability to use some other modules that make use of comp, but oh well)

There is a very common problem people run into when installing ubuntu on an external hard drive.
I don't know how familiar you are with the boot process, so I'll make this simple.

When you install any os. It needs to put some code on the MBR which is the first thing read and run from the hard drive at boot time. Ubuntu uses GRUB.

What happens when you install ubuntu is that it will put it's own bootloader (GRUB) on the MBR. This means that it will overwrite whatever was on there previously. This is fine for an external HDD because their MBRs are often empty because they're not being booted. It becomes a bit of a larger issue if you put the MBR on your main disk (where you have windows installed). GRUB, in that case would overwrite the windows bootloader. Windows should be able to boot because GRUB is able to make windows boot.

The problem with installing on an external HDD is that ubuntu has a tendency to want to put GRUB on the MBR of the first disk. (Your main HDD, most probably) Like I said above windows should still be able to boot because GRUB knows how to make it boot. The problem arises when you remove the external hard drive. GRUB keeps a bunch of files that it needs to operate in the /boot/grub directory. When you remove the external hard drive GRUB will not be able to do anything because it is lacking those files.

This can be prevented. Ubuntu, like all other distros will allow you to choose where you want to put GRUB. In your case you're going to want to make sure that you put it on the MBR of the external hard drive. You should be given the option before the installation when the installer asks you a bunch of questions. Make sure you don't miss it and make sure that GRUB will be installed on your external hdd before you proceed with the installation.

Very good to know. Appreciate you letting a linux nooby know before I proceed!!

Edited:

Do I need the pendrive program if I am putting linux on my external drive? I feel silly, since it is a usb connection, but then again there is no mention of external hard drive use on the install page.

Really? I didn't know that! I had installed the beta, and insta-puked all over my keyboard when I saw that it wasn't a joke, and that they've really made the menu worse that it was.
I'm not sure why they're ditching the entirety of function from their design, because it's much slower to get something done with the HUD.
But if you can disable it, at least that's a step in the right direction.

Very good to know. Appreciate you letting a linux nooby know before I proceed!!

Edited:

Do I need the pendrive program if I am putting linux on my external drive? I feel silly, since it is a usb connection, but then again there is no mention of external hard drive use on the install page.

You don't have to do anything but make sure that grub is installed on your external drives MBR (which is typically NOT /dev/sda), and that, of course, the rest of the system goes there too!

When you're done, just make sure to change the boot order in your BIOS, so that USB / External harddrives are checked first.

I'm on it now. I didn't change the boot order for this run, just booted from. Can I download google chrome on here? Also major question: On my external hardrive, can I move everything it made into one folder? I want to do this so my files are organized.

I'm on it now. I didn't change the boot order for this run, just booted from. Can I download google chrome on here? Also major question: On my external hardrive, can I move everything it made into one folder? I want to do this so my files are organized.

Edited:

Oh and the pen drive program put grub on the external hard drive.

Yes, you can install Chromium on all Linux distributions (or at least, most of them), and Google Chrome is available for Ubuntu and Fedora, and other *.deb or *.rpm supporting systems.

Linux uses another filesystem, that Windows will not detect. You can't have the entire system in one 'folder' as such, but you can have the entire system on one partition. Your files in your Ubuntu system should be well organized, and you shouldn't move any system files around.
I may have misunderstood something?

When I click on my external hard drive, there are multiple linux related files. I want to put them into one folder, so that when I click on my external hard drive it won't look like a cluster fuck. If I moved all the files into one folder that I were to create on the external hard drive, then I could clearly decipher between homework folders, pictures, downloads, etc.. and the linux files.

When I click on my external hard drive, there are multiple linux related files. I want to put them into one folder, so that when I click on my external hard drive it won't look like a cluster fuck. If I moved all the files into one folder that I were to create on the external hard drive, then I could clearly decipher between homework folders, pictures, downloads, etc.. and the linux files.

That right there is the LiveCD, not the operating system itself. You restart, and start up from that system, and then select 'Install'. You should not install Ubuntu using Wubi, as it will be installed alongside windows, inside Windows, and not as a seperate system. This can, and does, cause errors and problems.

Nevermind I figured everything out. I put ubuntu on my external hard drive (500gb) and allocated it 100gb to use, then at the end I did a ntsf partition. I have ~368GB left. Pretty cool stuff, I'm going to work on making the desktop aesthetically pleasing before I begin jumping into the thick of it. Oh and the only problem I see myself encountering is I downloaded the 64bit verson, and my laptop is 32bit. Another thing is since it's 64 bit it may not only cause a problem with my laptop, but other pcomputers I wish to use it with as well, such as the ones in my CS classes. Not even sure if I can change boot order on those though.

Nevermind I figured everything out. I put ubuntu on my external hard drive (500gb) and allocated it 100gb to use, then at the end I did a ntsf partition. I have ~368GB left. Pretty cool stuff, I'm going to work on making the desktop aesthetically pleasing before I begin jumping into the thick of it. Oh and the only problem I see myself encountering is I downloaded the 64bit verson, and my laptop is 32bit. Another thing is since it's 64 bit it may not only cause a problem with my laptop, but other pcomputers I wish to use it with as well, such as the ones in my CS classes. Not even sure if I can change boot order on those though.

If your computer is 32bit, you couldn't run 64bit on it at all. It wouldn't even boot.

Anyone know how to use VirtualBox on Linux Mint? I need a way to get back to windows and after I installed Linux Mint it won't let me change my OS to anything, even another Linux distribution. I downloaded the .iso file for Windows 8 consumer preview and tried to boot it through Unetbootin and it just gives me a default option and no more, every fucking time I do this shit. I fucked up really bad and I just need to get back to windows and I was hoping VirtualBox would help but I can't seem to get it started. It went to the installer and installed everything it needed and it's not showing up like I see in videos. Help!

Anyone know how to use VirtualBox on Linux Mint? I need a way to get back to windows and after I installed Linux Mint it won't let me change my OS to anything, even another Linux distribution. I downloaded the .iso file for Windows 8 consumer preview and tried to boot it through Unetbootin and it just gives me a default option and no more, every fucking time I do this shit. I fucked up really bad and I just need to get back to windows and I was hoping VirtualBox would help but I can't seem to get it started. It went to the installer and installed everything it needed and it's not showing up like I see in videos. Help!

did you remember to change the boot order in the bios, so it can actually boot from a CD/USB device?

also, windows8 + unetbootin never worked for me.

try to execute virtualbox trough the console (type in "virtualbox" without "")

Am I any safer streaming stuff on a college connection using ubuntu vs. windows?

Technically no, because the IT departement have most likely set up a network sniffer(if they didn't, they are fucking stupid), so they can see the whole network traffic of yours. It wouldn't matter if you used linux, OSX or windows, the traffic would be the same.